These are evergreen plants, whose sprigs are covered with spiny chevings located groups of three pieces. Juniper are shrubs, somewhat less often - low trees. Juniper is cultivated in decorative purposes, is widely used in landscape design and as a medicinal plant as a source of essential oil.
Representatives of the pine juniper family is distinguished by the presence of fruits in the form of juicy styling, which in the process of ripening from green becomes practically black. Mature berries have a sweet taste and characteristic smell.
For an ordinary juniper, it is characterized by growing in the undergrowth of coniferous and coniferous forests. In places it forms thickets. The plant is most common in the European part of the continent, captures Eastern and Western Siberia. Neutual to the composition and degree of humidifier soils, juniper is able to adapt to almost any conditions.
Therefore, different varieties of juniper ordinary decorate many gardens. Especially since they have the crown of the most diverse configuration: from column-like to stealing. In addition, with the help of a haircut juniper, you can give a variety of, including fantasy, forms.
As medicinal raw materials containing essential oils, pectin and organic acids, hidden hitch. The collection is produced in autumn. Ripe fruits are easily creptable when tapping on the trunk. The berries are dried in the air, covering their sunlight. Dried berries can be used in cooking as seasonings or flavoring. From juice fresh berries you can get syrup.
Juniper red is much more warm-up. It is common in the mountainous terrain of the Western Caucasus and the Crimea, is found in all countries of the Mediterranean. It is distinguished by its fruits - the brown-red hiking of spherical shape.
These small trees have a solid durable, non-rotting wood of a reddish shade, which is a valuable diverse material. In industrial purposes, its wood is distilled to obtain a trigger having disinfecting properties, which is used to prepare drugs intended for the treatment of skin diseases.
As a decorative plant, the juniper red is quite beautiful, but is only suitable for southern gardens.
Juniper semi-shaped spread in Central Asia, where these low (up to 10 m) trees with a wave crown form on the slopes of the mountains. The scratched leaflets are pressed against the twigs, but needle-shaped on the lower swung branches. Binding are black.
Wood solid, easy to process, serves material for making chess, pencils and other crafts. Fakeed twigs are harvested and through distillations are obtained from them essential oil, containing a number of biologically active compounds, a large amount of vitamins and with antiseptic properties.
Juniper Donskoy is also known as the Cossack juniper. It is a low shrub, common in dry areas of the Southern Urals, in the Crimea, on Don, in the North Caucasus, in Central Asia. Characteristic differences in appearance - flat, pressed leaf scaly branches. It is known that it was previously used as a medicinal plant, but the application was discontinued due to the content of toxic substances.
It has been established that in places where juniper grows, the air is much cleaner. It is associated with this with a large number of phytoncids, which evaporate from the surface of the leaves of this plant. This property is to release bactericidal substances - and led to the widespread use of juniper in folk medicine. A characteristic appearance and ability to adapt to various types of soil makes juniper with a popular decorative shrub.
Author - Ekaterina Majorova
Source - Springzhizni.ru.